Renewing the Political Perspective: Reflections on James Ceaser,Political Science,and Liberal Democracy

Abstract

This is a response to the contributions to the symposium on David Walsh's trilogy on modernity: After Ideology (1990), The Growth of the Liberal Soul (1997), and The Modern Philosophical Revolution (2008). After expressing appreciation for the careful reading the work has received, it enters into a reflection on the underlying unity of the studies. This is intended to address the common concerns that center on the issue of how the modern world is to be understood. It emphasizes the impossibility of separating the attempt to understand modernity from the need to take responsibility for it. This is the perspective that has illuminated the totalitarian catharsis, the durability of liberal political regimes, and the existential turn within modern philosophy. In the latter part of the essay, a response is offered to specific objections and characterizations that individual symposiasts raise.     

If It Were Not for the Dean, I Would Have Done More: Reflections on the Contributions of Martin Wobst

This brief paper offers several observations on the contributions of Martin Wobst to the practice of anthropological archaeology as framed by personal perspective and with reference to some of the other articles in this issue.     

A narratologist's Critical Reflections on Synchronic Studies of the Bible: A Response to Gregory T. K. Wong

It is common that “synchronists” claim that the book of Judges is a meaningful and coherent text. Some of them even describe it as a coherent narrative, that is, a narrative with a plot. They then draw the conclusion that these suggested patterns or structures so to speak “reinterpret” or “overnarrativize” the individual stories and motifs in these stories, which thereby are given both new functions and new meanings. However, there is a logical lapsus in this reasoning that relates to a theoretical issue: Given the relative autonomy of narratives and, as a consequence, their relative resistance to reworking, can such assumed effects be achieved, and how, if this were the case, can it be done? My conclusion, based on theoretical arguments and an analysis of the book of Judges, is that these stories and their motifs cannot be transformed in the way synchronic scholars suggest.     

A Biographical Note on James Maxwell,Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod

This note seeks to clarify the course of the career of James Maxwell, gentleman usher of the black rod in several earlier Stuart parliaments. Maxwell was a Scot who followed James I south in 1603, serving in his household and that of Charles I, first as a gentleman usher daily waiter, and from 1619 as a groom of the bedchamber. In 1620 he secured the office of black rod. In 1642 he failed to follow the king to Oxford but remained with the parliament at Westminster, although largely delegating his duties as black rod to his associate, Alexander Thayne. In 1647, he was allowed by parliament to attend the king at Holdenby House. He died in 1650 as earl of Dirletoun in Scotland, although the circumstances in which he acquired this title are obscure.     

略论孙中山对中国红十字运动的贡献

本文从三个方面初步再现孙中山对中国红十字运动的主要贡献:翻译出版《红十字会救伤第一法》一书,促进了红十字在中国的传播,为中国红十字会的诞生奠定了社会心理基础,当之无愧成为中国红十字运动的先驱者之一;民国成立伊始,促成中国红十字会“立案”取得合法地位,红十字运动平稳过渡,步上健康发展的轨道;为红十字会所题“博爱”,载入红会史册,成为中国红十字运动中恒久发挥作用的精神动力。